Beaver County makes investment into creating drone team

BEAVER COUNTY, Pa. — The buzz of the blades is a new sound being heard in Beaver County.

“It gives us better situational awareness by not using people in the field we can deploy these to assist our SWAT team, firefighters, hazmat team,” said Kevin Whipple, the Beaver County deputy director of emergency management.

These drones can be used for basic emergency management situations, like searching the woods at night, or in more stressful active situations, like a SWAT call.

“Here in Ambridge we had a SWAT call — there was an individual holding a child hostage and we were able to [use] drones in the front and back and providing footage of the suspect in the window and he would put the child at the window so we would know they were okay and they were able to get into the building and bring them out. It was all on camera,” Whipple said.

It wouldn’t be possible without a huge investment from county commissioners in the last six months.

“We have a handful of individuals who already passed their drone license and a handful who are still taking them. We want to make sure everyone who is flying is well-trained. So the investment into the equipment and into those individuals, it’s about $200,000,” said Beaver County Commissioner Daniel Camp.

Now, the team is up to a dozen drones, one even tethered to full-time power.

“They do have thermal technology which at night or looking for a missing person it will detect heat so we can search the area a little better if we see a heat detection, and our swat team even has mini drones that can fly into buildings,” Whipple said.

Add in a megaphone and spotlight, this technology is changing the game.

“It’s something I think we are going to focus on here in the future, and we want to make sure our communities are safe and if this is one way we can do it then we will,” Camp said.

With the monitor setup, the drone team is able to live feedback to anyone who’s part of the operation. That could be the mobile command a few blocks away or even the 911 center miles away. It allows the county to work as a team in any situation.

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